In a world of ever-increasing complexity, a person can find himself or herself carrying an increasing number of cards, forms of identification and devices. In addition, organizations may find themselves purchasing new hardware or making other expenditures to accommodate for various transaction service providers. In the retail environment, for example, financial institutions issue credit and debit cards to their clients. Each of the credit and debit cards is associated with one or more accounts of a client, and provides both an identification of the account(s) of the client and authentication that the client is entitled to draw from those accounts. As a result, the clients of the financial institutions are generally required to carry such cards with them in order to draw from those accounts. It can be burdensome in some cases for a person to carry around a number of such cards. In addition, should the person forget to bring the appropriate card with him, he may not be able to complete a transaction.
Mobile devices are ubiquitous today. Many people have even cancelled traditional landline telephone services at their residences and/or businesses, and have adopted mobile phones as their primary means of communications. Accordingly, many people typically carry such mobile devices with them wherever they go. For purposes of the discussion hereinbelow, mobile devices include mobile telephones, personal digital assistants, and other portable computing devices that have a network communications interface and an output interface, such as a display. Mobile devices can include a subscriber identification module (“SIM”) card that can provide additional capabilities and/or capacity.
It is an object of the invention to provide a novel system and method for authorizing transactions via mobile devices.